Despite its perception as a social network that has gone out of public consciousness, it appears MySpace still has relevance to advertisers, with 50.6m visitors each month.
The site that became popular during the early 2000s as a social network – as well as a way for up-and-coming bands to promote their music – fell to the wayside, much like other social networks, including Bebo, after Facebook began making serious headway in the late 2000s as the place to be online.
However, it appears a significant number of people are still using MySpace, given comScore’s recent Video Metrix ranking that shows the site ranks in 16th place for video views on the internet, totalling 300m just in November.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the metrics for November 2014 actually show an incredible increase from the same period in 2013, showing 575pc more visits than the 2013 figure. In November 2014, MySpace reached 50.6m unique users in the US.
A potential return to prominence?
A company called Specific Media acquired MySpace in 2011 for US$35m after News Corp’s disastrous US$580m purchase of MySpace nearly a decade ago didn’t go according to plan.
Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Viant Media, Specific Media’s parent company, said nostalgia still plays a part of people’s decision to visit the site, given that some of their treasured photos from their youth would still be stored on the site’s servers.
“MySpace was an early photo-sharing platform. So we still see a lot of people coming back to access old photos. They may not visit every day but they come back once a week or once a month,” said Vanderhook.
However, he said the key to what he believes will see MySpace prove to be an effective bed for advertisers is a new metric that will combine MySpace’s registration data with other companies to form a more accurate picture of a user than Facebook, et al.
MySpace page image via Shutterstock
